Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta is monitoring employee activity across hundreds of popular websites and applications, including Google, LinkedIn, and Wikipedia, as part of an effort to collect data for training its AI models.
Reuters reports that the social media giant has implemented a new employee tracking tool called Model Capability Initiative, or MCI, which captures keystrokes and mouse clicks from workers using their corporate computers. The initiative aims to gather real-world examples of how people interact with computers to improve Meta’s AI agent development.
According to internal documents, the list of monitored sites extends beyond external platforms to include Meta’s own properties. Other third-party services under surveillance include Microsoft’s GitHub, Salesforce’s Slack, and Atlassian. The tracking list remains in flux and originally encompassed AI applications such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Anthropic’s Claude.
The data collection project ties directly to CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s push to close the gap with competitors in generative AI, where Meta is fiercely competing with companies like OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google. As part of this effort, Zuckerberg initiated a spending campaign last summer, recruiting Scale AI’s Alexandr Wang to build a team focused on developing new foundation models.
The announcement of the tracking initiative has sparked significant concern among Meta employees. Multiple workers described the data-tracking project as dystopian in internal communications. Others raised worries that MCI could inadvertently expose sensitive information, including user passwords, details about unreleased product development, and personal data regarding employees’ immigration status, health conditions, or family members.
In a statement to Breitbart News, a Meta spokesperson wrote:
If we’re building agents to help people complete everyday tasks using computers, our models need real examples of how people actually use them — things like mouse movements, clicking buttons, and navigating dropdown menus. To help, we’re launching an internal tool that will capture these kinds of inputs on certain applications to help us train our models. There are safeguards in place to protect sensitive content, and the data is not used for any other purpose.
The memo provided several assurances to employees about the tool’s limitations. According to the document, the tracking system would only view employees’ screen contents as they appear and would not access files or attachments directly. The memo also claimed that any incidental personal information captured from corporate email screens would not be learned by the AI model due to protective measures in place.
Breitbart News previously reported that Meta is laying off 10 percent of its workforce:
Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta has announced a significant workforce reduction that will affect roughly 8,000 employees, representing 10 percent of the company’s total staff. The social media giant communicated the decision to its workforce through an internal memo distributed on Thursday.
According to the announcement, the layoffs are scheduled to take effect on May 20. The cuts are part of a strategic effort to improve operational efficiency while the company continues to allocate substantial resources toward AI development and infrastructure.
In addition to the direct job eliminations, Meta has decided to halt recruitment for approximately 6,000 open positions that had previously been earmarked for hiring. This dual approach of both reducing current staff and freezing new hiring represents a comprehensive effort to control workforce costs and streamline operations.
Wynton Hall has written Code Red: The Left, the Right, China, and the Race to Control AI, to serve as the definitive guide on how the MAGA movement can create positions on AI that benefit humanity without handing control of our nation to the leftists of Silicon Valley or allowing the Chinese to take over the world. As companies join the race to feed the insatiable data demands of AI model training, even those working outside of the tech sector could find their every move scrutinized by trackers.
Senator Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), who was named one of TIME’s 100 Most Influential People in AI, praised CODE RED as a “must-read.” She added: “Few understand our conservative fight against Big Tech as Hall does,” making him “uniquely qualified to examine how we can best utilize AI’s enormous potential, while ensuring it does not exploit kids, creators, and conservatives.” Award-winning investigative journalist and Public founder Michael Shellenberger calls CODE RED “illuminating,” ”alarming,” and describes the book as “an essential conversation-starter for those hoping to subvert Big Tech’s autocratic plans before it’s too late.”
Read more at Reuters here.
Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of AI, free speech, and online censorship.